InMedia The French Journal of Media Studies 2 | 2012 Performing/Representing Male Bonds Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/301 DOI: 10.4000/inmedia.301 ISSN: 2259-4728 Publisher Center for Research on the English-Speaking World (CREW) Electronic reference InMedia, 2 | 2012, « Performing/Representing Male Bonds » [Online], Online since 15 November 2012, connection on 24 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/301 ; DOI : https:// doi.org/10.4000/inmedia.301 This text was automatically generated on 24 September 2020. © InMedia 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Performing/Representing Male Bonds Performing/Representing Male Bonds Raphael Costambeys-Kempczynski, Claire Hélie and Pierre-Antoine Pellerin Losing Visibility? The Rise and Fall of Hypermasculinity in Science Fiction Films Marianne Kac-Vergne The Reluctant Patriarch: The Emergence of Lads and Lad Mags in the 1990s Nick Growse Seducing Women to Assess Each Other: Male Hierarchies within the Seduction Community Mélanie Gourarier Midlife Pop Masculinities in the Here and Now Chris Tinker Varia British Party Election Broadcasts (2001, 2005 and 2010): Ideological Framing, Storytelling, Individualisation David Haigron Bibliographical Essay ‘Locus of Control’: A Selective Review of Disney Theme Parks Thibaut Clément Interview At the Crossroads of Media, Media Critique, and the Critique of Media critics – An Interview with Serge Halimi, Editor-in-Chief of Le Monde Diplomatique Serge Halimi and Christine Larrazet Critical Perspective Social Cognition Divina Frau-Meigs InMedia, 2 | 2012 2 Conference and Seminar Reviews Offshore Processes: International Perspectives on Australian Film and Television 8-11 July 2012, Monash Prato Centre, Italy Oliver Haag The Translation and Reception of Multilingual Films 15-16 June 2012, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 Samuel Bréan and Jean-François Cornu Contemporary Screen Narratives 17 May 2012, Department of Culture, Film and Media, University of Nottingham Fabrice Lyczba Internet Studies in Europe Symposium on Internet and Society, 25-28 October 2011, Humboldt University, BerlinICTs and Society Conference, 2-4 May 2012, Uppsala University, Uppsala Mathieu O'Neil Cinema and the Crossing of Frontiers, 16th SERCIA Conference 8-10 September 2011, University of Bath Julie Assouly and Marianne Kac-Vergne Book Reviews Violaine Roussel, Art vs War : les Artistes américains contre la guerre en Irak Paris : Presses de Sciences Po, 2011, 314 p. Delphine Letort Kathleen Franz and Susan Smulyan (eds), Major Problems in American Popular Culture Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011, 496 p. Elsa Grassy Carol MacKeogh, Díóg O’Connell, Documentary in a Changing State: Ireland since the 1990s Cork: Cork University Press, 2012, 176 p. Estelle Epinoux Brian A. Monahan, The Shock of the News: Media Coverage and the Making of 9/11 New York & London: New York University Press, 2010, 221 p. Delphine Letort Rock History and Culture Christophe Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock (Paris: Fayard, 2011, 800 p.); Claude Chastagner, De la culture rock (Paris: PUF, 2011, 277 p.) Éric Gonzalez InMedia, 2 | 2012 3 Raphael Costambeys-Kempczynski, Claire Hélie et Pierre-Antoine Pellerin (dir.) Performing/Representing Male Bonds InMedia, 2 | 2012 4 Performing/Representing Male Bonds Raphael Costambeys-Kempczynski, Claire Hélie and Pierre-Antoine Pellerin EDITOR'S NOTE This dossier was followed for InMedia by Divina Frau-Meigs and Nolwenn Mingant. Masculinity, Men, Male 1 In 1993, Michael S. Kimmel published a ground-breaking article entitled “Invisible Masculinity,” which began with a particularly striking opening statement: “American men have no history.”1 Kimmel argues that even if history books are largely written by men and are about men, they do not deal with the experience of men as men. Thus, for Kimmel, men have no history as “gendered selves” and the effect is to render the multiplicity of masculine identities invisible. Thanks to the work of feminist scholars over the past four decades we have been able to recognize the different manifestations of invisible hegemonic masculinities. As Stephen M. Whitehead informs us, the fields of Masculinity and Men’s Studies have thus been able “to turn attention to men in a way that renders them and their practices visible, apparent and subject to question.”2 2 Rather than attach themselves to hegemonic masculinity as a unified normative practice guaranteeing men’s domination over women, the articles in this issue of InMedia will attempt to render visible some of the practices that construct and define the various relationships between men as well as structure the homosocial spaces in which they take place. Concentrating on the performances of masculinity, the articles featured here focus on the representations made of male bonds in and through different media in the English-speaking world. Though the notion of ‘performance’ here is to be understood as both the observable behaviour of one group of people as well as the carrying out of an operation that has been commanded, one must also bear InMedia, 2 | 2012 5 in mind Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. Butler distinguishes between performance and performativity where “gender proves to be performative – that is constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed.”3 For Butler, gender is “a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame”4 where the subject, masculine or feminine, is not free to choose the performance of their gender because the subject only exists within performative gender acts. The articles collected here deal both with Butler’s understanding of gender identity but also with media representations of the performances of masculine subjects and how these are received by different communities of men, whether it be actors in film, male models on the covers of men’s magazines, online avatars or singers on a stage. 3 It is important at this point to map out the vocabulary used when discussing masculinity. Defined as the “qualities regarded as characteristic of men”,5 the simple denotation of the noun ‘masculinity’ does not preclude its application to women.6 There is a suggestion in this dictionary definition, however, that if a subject does not demonstrate masculine qualities it would be difficult to identify it as a man. The state of being a man and having masculine characteristics appears inextricably linked as R.W. Connell confirms: 4 In its modern usage the term assumes that one’s behaviour results from the type of person one is. That is to say, an unmasculine person would behave differently: being peaceable rather that violent, conciliatory rather than dominating, hardly able to kick a football, uninterested in sexual conquest, and so forth.7 5 It is the definition of the characteristics of men, that is to say the quality of men as societal and cultural beings, which must retain our attention. In the precise context of male bonds, the articles featured here also tackle the question of men as social beings defined by and through their associations with other men. 6 The adjective ‘male’ refers us back to a purely biological notion designating the sex that can fertilize the opposite sex but cannot bear offspring itself.8 Yet, as we continually swim against the current of connotation, it is impossible for such a term to remain impervious to suggestion, inference and interpretation. In this manner, to be male is to be robust, vigorous and virile; it is, of course, to be ‘manly’. Beyond grouping together these attributes, however, such terms as ‘maleness’ and ‘manliness’ are meant to help constitute an identifiable group, a group that can position itself in an ‘us against them’ logic wrapped up in such dictionary definitions as “the type of strength, fortitude, or hardiness traditionally associated with men as opposed to women or children” 9 (our italics). 7 It is important to analyse dictionary definitions as they often remain the primary source of information when trying to stabilise the meaning of words. However, as we have seen these definitions are not thorough enough when trying to understand the social and cultural impact generated by such complex terminology. The articles published in this issue of InMedia address, with vital critical insight, these difficult and intricate notions through the links and ties that constitute different communities of men. These male bonds are understood to be complex societal phenomena that function as part of an integral whole, not in opposition to but in relation with women as well as other men and groups of men. InMedia, 2 | 2012 6 Why Study Men and Masculinities? 8 Like femininity, masculinity is an exclusion procedure, a code that protects us against individualism and the expression of freedom of others. Where speakers violate these codes the system traditionally reacts by categorizing non-masculine behaviour in men as pathological, obscene, perverse, deviant or simply criminal. Thus, as Donald E. Hall remarks, the system must work to police against such behaviour: “[t]he prevailing gender and sexual paradigms of an era regulate everyone’s lives, working to curtail possibilities and relentlessly push sexual/erotic relationships into socially acceptable channels.”10 9 Masculinity and femininity it follows are second order codes, special categories of political fiction operating at the level of the social system. Second order codes are organic, however, bent on being all-inclusive, and gradually non-masculine behaviour is subsumed and ingested by what one may wish to call hegemonic masculinity. 10 As the American historian E. Anthony Rotundo reminds us: “Manhood is not a social edict determined on high and enforced by law. As a human invention, manhood is learned, used, reinforced, and reshaped by individuals in the course of life.”11 Moreover, if men can subvert rules by virtue of their cognitive autonomy, they can push back the boundaries of masculinity, of what is socially acceptable for a man to say or do without compromising his identity as a man.